THE VAIL HOUSEhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com
Restoring a Historic 19th Century House in Western New JerseyMon, 26 Mar 2018 15:37:30 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngTHE VAIL HOUSEhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com
39. Conclusionhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/39-conclusion/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/39-conclusion/#commentsFri, 23 Mar 2018 04:03:01 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=1206Continue reading →]]>It has been three years since we closed on the house in Rhinebeck. We are opening our B&B in the spring. We sold the Vail House in December of 2015. Here is the kick in the crotch. We sold our house to our philistine neighbors. They now live in my house.

Can you imagine how depressing that is to me? It was the only way out. They were the only people who would buy it. That is how bad they wanted to pave over the back yard. Virtually no one looked at our house the entirety of the time it was offered. Maybe three people tops. We were in no financial position to just sit on it for years. And renting it would have kept us tethered in the condo association.

It was truly one of the worst experiences in my life. They were total dicks the whole process, demanding concessions for lead paint removal, exterior carpentry work, and other common old house condition issues, none of which we granted. We were already taking a huge loss on the price. They demanded we remove the compost pile I created behind the garage. I honestly don’t think they understood how it worked. Incensed, our kindly realtor took it away for us to his house. Adding to the drama, we were quoted around $15,000 to move the contents of our house to the Hudson Valley, so we had no choice but to pack everything ourselves and rent a succession of nine U-hauls, plus innumerable trips in my van, to get everything out. And when I say everything, I mean all the boxwood too. I took every one with me. And I sold all my firewood. It was bad enough I had to leave the bluestone patio.

It breaks my heart to imagine what the inside of the house looks like now. While we were still in contract they dismissed the condo rules and began throwing away original sashes and putting white vinyl replacement windows in the Trimmer Store. Fearing the same fate would befall the Vail House, I removed all the antique window locks and lifts I had added to the house. How could I leave them with people who literally had a “Window World” advertisement mounted in their front yard? I swapped out all the antique lighting fixtures and replaced them with junk from Lowe’s. It really pained me to do that to the house. They didn’t have the slightest interest in inquiring through our realtor if they could have any of the historic photos we possessed of the property. I took a shoe box sized wooden trunk with me that contained all of the archeological finds I had made in the yard over the eight years I was there, always assuming it would be given to the next owner. Shortly after we moved, our old neighbor from across the street sent us an email with an image of the huge satellite dish newly mounted over the front door.

So in the end we got out, but under horrible circumstances. I felt so much older when it was finalized. There was little sense of relief since we just segued into a barely habitable and filthy new house full of uphill battles and unknown frustrations. I can tell you we went on in this new endeavor to make some more huge and costly mistakes, including bringing a contractor into our lives who made our Quakertown neighbors look like diplomats. But my marriage has managed to survive and the children are thriving. There were good people in our lives at the time too. The realtor we used in Quakertown had been really supportive and sympathetic. Our old neighbors had been really great as well. They donated packing blankets and fed me when I came back alone to get the shrubs on one of my last trips. We miss them a lot.

I don’t think I will ever love the house I live in now the way I loved the Vail House. Sure, it was a terrible buy as an investment and I would have liked a few more years to enjoy the hard work that went into it. Not to mention the expense. Who knows what has become of our extravagant Morris wallpaper or all my dry scraped doors. Would I do it again? Well, that experience certainly tempered my approach in the new place. Its hard for me now not to be even more sensitive than I already was to how fragile and irreplaceable America’s old houses are. To me it isn’t just worrying about the threat of destruction posed to what is original in your average Victorian house by the careless and ignorant, but also how easily and quickly ones restoration work can suffer the same fate.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog and I urge anyone passing through Hunterdon County, New Jersey to make a stop and explore the old Quaker Meeting House and cemetery in Quakertown. If you do and should happen to also see the Vail House, please don’t let me know if the garden in the back is full of cars. -George

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/39-conclusion/feed/2thevailhouse38. Our New Projecthttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/38-our-new-project/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/38-our-new-project/#respondFri, 23 Mar 2018 02:15:31 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=990Continue reading →]]>To my surprise we quickly found a viable candidate for a Bed and Breakfast in a much humiliated Victorian house in Rhinebeck, New York. The location for hospitality use was incredible, two minutes to the train station, and a five minute walk from the village’s edge to a touristy commercial center full of restaurants. The house is on two and a half acres surrounded by woodland where the 19th century bluestone village sidewalk comes to an end. And the only neighbor a public library! A pool, a guest house for my parents, and just enough space for four decent guest rooms plus ours in the main house.

The catch, of course, was the house had been disfigured by every post war cliche you can think of: shag carpeting, drop ceilings, panelling, layers of linoleum, horrendous additions to the sides and rear of the cheapest and crudest construction. That was topped off by years of neglect. Leaking roof, water damaged plaster, destroyed retaining walls, wet mud in the basement, a yard of tree stumps and shattered asphalt. There wasn’t a square inch of this house that didn’t need to be addressed. The stupidity and laziness of the previous owners permeated every room. The house had thousands of dead insect carcasses trapped behind huge sheets of plastic taped to all the windows and covered in a thick film of tobacco juice. A pet bird had been allowed to fly free in one room and its turds were dried hard to the radiator and splattered on the wall behind its cage. In another room a hideous 1960’s stone planter spanned the width of a picture window, its interior filled with small stones and sun dried cat turd. And most sadly for me as an antiquarian, and in such sharp contrast to The Vail House, so little was left of the house’s original fabric. The 19th century storm windows had been thrown away, marble mantles replaced with knotty pine, the plaster ceiling medallions destroyed, almost all of the original interior doors had been tossed, windows had been turned into doorways and all the sash lifts were broken and every window painted shut inside and out. The day of the closing on The Vail House was one of the most exciting of my life. The closing on our new home was far less ebullient.

Our new Italianate home, probably built around 1870. The ill conceived addition to the right was added about a century later.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/38-our-new-project/feed/0thevailhouse37. The Decision to Leave The Vail Househttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/37-the-decision-to-leave-the-vail-house/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/37-the-decision-to-leave-the-vail-house/#respondFri, 23 Mar 2018 01:53:53 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=1330Continue reading →]]>The boundaries clearly demarcated and the Herb Garden moved, contact with our neighbors was kept to a minimum and the educating of them about the condo rules was left to our lawyer. What a ridiculous situation to be in. Uncomfortable in my own house, what a drag. Such close proximity to such uncivilized neighbors, and the unlikelihood that our relationship would ever improve, eventually began to wear us down. It was particularly bad timing as we had a newborn child to focus on and I had growing concerns over my lease situation on the shop I was renting in New York City. I had a steadily worsening commute, that had started out horrendous to begin with, and home was supposed to be my sanctuary from stress, not the source of a deluge more. We were still smarting from having been rebuked by Franklin Township in our attempt to purchase the Trimmer Store. Had we been able to purchase it reasonably, and were making money from rental apartments, I probably could have been excited about restoring it. It seemed like the unraveling of a lot of our hopes for the future.

Wedding ourselves to our neighbor had been a challenge from the start but the frustration had never been great enough thus far to make us regret having done it. I liked the house too much. It was just the right size. Just the right amount and kind of cosmetic work that I could handle myself without expensive contractors. The yard was just the right size for the type of garden I wanted. Now it had backfired on us in a very troubling way and things were bound to get worse.

How would preventing the neighbors from remodeling all the character out of the store play out? I dreaded the additional legal fees. But I also dreaded the idea of caving in front of my friends and older neighbors. What about all that talk I made to them for years about historic preservation and how much it meant to me? The thought of letting the Trimmer Store get ruined on my watch made me sick. And hadn’t I believed, however stupidly, that restoring my house would increase its value? If I ever wanted to sell it, surely someone else interested in old houses would be saddened at how The Trimmer Store was soon to be muddled, right? I had already been horrified when the porch was compromised behind my back and I couldn’t bear it to happen again. But I must have been in denial to think that there could possibly be anyone in 2015, what with every other house in Hunterdon County on the market, that would have been interested in buying The Vail House and willingly enter into a condo association with strangers. And if they meet these particular philistines surely they would run screaming. No matter how attractive it had become, my house was unsaleable.

Sooner or later my lease was coming to an end and my business would shutter. I had no plan at all to confront this. The retail environment for small business in the city was radically different than it had been just a few years before. Relocation elsewhere in Manhattan was unthinkable. A mid-life career change was inevitable and perhaps now with our present predicament it was time to consider moving on. With my parents in agreement, we began looking for a property that could accommodate all of us but also become a business. Inn-keeping would be the way out of my store woes and the condo association.

We took some pictures of the house to give to a few realtors to see what they thought our chances of selling it were (not good). These images, and the ones in our official real estate listing, are the last record of how the interior appeared before our possessions went into boxes.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/37-the-decision-to-leave-the-vail-house/feed/0thevailhouse36. Relocating the Herb Gardenhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/35-relocating-the-herb-garden/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/35-relocating-the-herb-garden/#respondThu, 22 Mar 2018 20:49:09 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=992Continue reading →]]>How different our life would have been if our beloved house had never shared a driveway. But then we probably would never have had the means to live there and the bulk of the time before the arrival of our new neighbors (who I will refer to as The Philistines) had been a very happy time indeed. The mood was very different now. We had to see The Philistines on a near daily basis as they opened a personal training business in the old Trimmer Store, called Perspiring Bodies, or something like that. Complete with purple signage so garish that the neighbors across the street complained to the zoning office. It was from in there that they plotted the new vinyl windows and siding that would mean another great battle between us as changes to the historical character of the buildings was something that required condo approval.

The Philistines presented such an impenetrable wall of stupidity and meanness. It was so depressing to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees just to get a neighbor to acknowledge the content of the very condo agreement they entered into. We did enjoy the upper hand in that agreement, being the larger of the two structures and the domestic one, deference had been paid to us when the rules were conceived giving us greater access to the driveway but only really because it lead to our garage and a spot in front of it exclusively for our use. It was common sense to us and had worked for the previous seven years. Can you imagine spending that time lovingly restoring a house that you never plan to leave, nurture a formal garden in the backyard, and along comes a complete stranger who can’t stand that they can’t pave over half your backyard to park SUV’s mere feet away from your patio, and want to fight you over a situation you are already legally guarded against?

As soon as the neighbors learned they were powerless to reconfigure the driveway, they imposed martial law on their side of the backyard and if they could have, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them planting landmines. The dividing line between our properties was on a severe, awkward, and rather unattractive diagonal. Years before we had to concern ourselves with its precise coordinates, I laid out my herb garden with the blessing of our then absentee neighbor. She thought it was great that I was enthusiastic about the yard, especially since it meant she didn’t have to do it. The new reality was that my garden was part in hostile enemy territory and would have to be destroyed. Preparing to stay put and fight, I moved the entire herb garden over the course of several days to the other side of the yard. I then replanted the now triangular part of our yard along the no fly zone with a yew hedge and rose bushes. The Philistines put down grass seed but curiously, given the husband was a landscaper, he used a weedwacker to cut the grass and would shear it so close to the ground that most of it died. He was clearly not a man interested in working with nature. His idea of weeding was to use massive amounts of roundup and kill more things than he encouraged.

The garden before its relocation and a view of the grassy area behind The Trimmer Store the neighbors wanted to pave over.

The newly defined diagonal boundary.

July, 2014. The layout on the opposite side of the yard with the boxwood recently installed.

The new Herb Garden a year later in July, 2015.

As soon as I completed the relocation, I set about creating a similarly gravel pathed Kitchen Garden beyond. Trying to make the most of a difficult situation, I made the Herb Garden larger this time. Happily, I liked it better in its new location as it was now on a level grade and it could just be glimpsed from the sidewalk in front of the house on the left side.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/35-relocating-the-herb-garden/feed/0thevailhouse35. The Nightmare Arrives, or Why You Should Never, Ever, Buy a Historic House with a Shared Drivewayhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-the-nightmare-arrives-or-why-you-should-never-ever-buy-a-historic-house-with-a-shared-driveway/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-the-nightmare-arrives-or-why-you-should-never-ever-buy-a-historic-house-with-a-shared-driveway/#respondThu, 22 Mar 2018 14:41:04 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=994Continue reading →]]>This is where, beginning with the previous post, this blog changes from being a record of our attempt at restoring our Victorian house, to a tale of regret and warning. Having put ourselves in the vulnerable position of not knowing who would become the other half of the Vail House/ Trimmer Store Condo Association, we could only hope it would be someone civil. So it was despairing the first time we met one of our future new neighbors.

The Trimmer Store had been on the market for some time before the asking price was lowered to around $150,000. We were sitting on the porch having a yard sale one summer afternoon when an interested party introduced himself. He was adamant that if he bought the place he would be the sole owner of the driveway. I explained to him that this was not the case and that it was common property, after all we had spent six months creating the rules as to how the driveway easements worked. He wouldn’t hear it and held his position. Not a great first introduction.

A few months later he and his wife took ownership of the store. They never reached out to us when they were in contract and we did not meet the two of them together until we invited them over to exchange contact information. They stood us up for this initial meeting and when they came on the second try they had not prepared any contact information for us. The first thing out of there mouths when we sat down began with “Now that we own the driveway…”.

My wife did her best to diplomatically explain the meaning of common property, but they told us they didn’t like our attitude and they especially didn’t like us telling them what to do with “their property”. They either pretended to be completely ignorant about the condo rules or they didn’t understand them. We didn’t know which was more disturbing. Were they told by their realtor not to worry about the details? Did they think that if they just kept saying they could do whatever they wanted it would become reality? Their vision was apparently to turn their super tiny bit of yard into parking spaces. Ones that they assured us would be really attractive looking. Nevermind that the pre-existing easement allowed for but one car from their building to use the driveway for the sole purpose of accessing a small carport. Oh, the other thing high on their agenda was to change the name of the condo association because their last name wasn’t Trimmer. Did they think we were the Vail’s?

We had no choice but to enlist a lawyer. The husband is a landscaper and we fretted we would go away for a few days and come back to find the whole driveway reconfigured. Their lawyer sent us some nonsense that our houses were not in a historic district, which was funny because there are three ways to drive into Quakertown and all three have signs that welcome you to the historic district (State register 2/20/90; National Register 8/23/90). We didn’t know where he was going with that anyway. Ultimately they had to accept the fact that they bought into an association with legally binding rules and that they were stuck having to adhere to them. It made them hopping mad and completely untakeable in conversation. The wife, a bodybuilder with anger management issues, was unable to hold an adult conversation with me without insults. It was awful.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-the-nightmare-arrives-or-why-you-should-never-ever-buy-a-historic-house-with-a-shared-driveway/feed/0thevailhouse34. Our Predicamenthttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-our-predicament/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-our-predicament/#respondThu, 22 Mar 2018 14:29:04 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=912Continue reading →]]>2007 was a terrible year to buy a house in New Jersey. Prices for starter size old homes in rough shape, even in marginalized locations with poor mass transit, were laughably high. The day we first saw The Vail House it was literally twice the size of the other two houses our realtor took us to view and around the same price. Surely there had to be a catch?

Indeed, there was. A big one. Since the 19th century, whomever owned The Vail House also owned and operated a business out of the Trimmer Store next to it. The seller, a cunning realtor, somehow managed to convince the township to let her split the property into two units so she could retain ownership of the store. This was complicated to do as the two buildings were quite knitted together: a shared driveway, shared well, shared fences, a septic field that extended across both yards.

The solution proposed by the municipality was to establish a condo association with lots of legal paperwork about how the two buildings (and their owners) would co-exist. Who in suburban America would give up so much autonomy and get in bed with a complete stranger you ask? A young, naive couple who wanted to live in something bigger than their dorm size apartment in New York City. 2007 was also a terrible year to be a renter in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

Our ever increasing rent was at the mercy of a landlord we had never met in person. It has been said a tiny New York apartment serves as a form of birth control, and we longed for the possibilities of a house. We were the suckers the seller needed, young people used to living on top of their neighbors, desperate to escape the high cost of urban living and plant a garden. Surely, so much house for the money (in 2007 dollars) would be worth a little awkwardness.

It was awkward from the start. We were in contract for six months. The lawyers went back and forth endlessly over the rules and regulations that would come to be known as The Vail House/ Trimmer Store Condo Association. The seller lived in New England and looking back it is staggering how stupid we were not insisting on meeting her in person to see if we even liked her.

The seller turned out to be a classic absentee landlord, well off and residing in New Hampshire. She made the elderly couple who had a horse saddlery business in the Trimmer store do all her maintenance work. She had no handy man or landscaper, and never answered her phone. She didn’t vet tenants for the apartment above the shop in person, and subjected the shop keepers, and us, to dysfunctional and unstable neighbors. One of whom left the property in a police car. Once the recession forced the saddle shop to close, the only way to get something done on her side was to do it ourselves. Lawn mowing, fall leaf raking, fence repair, snow shoveling, cleaning up her tenant’s garbage, she got a lot of free work out of us. Our reward was a family newsletter in the mail every Christmastime telling us where she had been vacationing that year. She didn’t even check in with us after Hurricane Sandy.

Still, in the big picture we adored our house and we harbored plans for the future. We would bide our time and one day hoped to own the store and make the property whole again. Until then, our relationship with New Hampshire was fairly predictable and once the store became un-rentable after the financial collapse, we settled into a routine. After a succession of dubious businesses in the store had failed, our neighbor stopped looking for new ones. These sleazy tenants would leave behind their junk and skip out on the rent. In 2013 she offered us the Trimmer Store, but with the insane asking price of $300,000.

Our condo partner wanted to capitalize on us being the most logical ones to buy it. It would protect us from potential crazy people joining our condo association (how did we not see that possibility when we were in contract?) and we could, in theory, derive some profit from owning it. That second selling point had some problems. Deferred maintenance had left the building in dreadful condition. The roof needed repair, the basement flooded, the front porch had been ruined (see post no. 16), the foundation needed repointing, we doubted there was any insulation. Clapboards kept falling off. Perhaps most significantly, the storefront had proven to be completely un-rentable. There was no retail context with no place for signage, no parking lot, and no business district. To provide us with income, the building was going to need to have rental apartments on both floors. Did I mention it also came with huge commercial property taxes?

Officials in Franklin Township could not have been less helpful or sympathetic. They flat out said “No way!” to changing the building’s status from commercial to residential, and that the first floor could never become an apartment. Well that was that then. It would have spelled financial ruin if we acquired it at any price. It would have cost us a fortune to buy it and fix it up, all for one rental apartment that barely paid the property taxes. It made no sense. We knew if it was going to sell, it was going to sell for cheap. It didn’t show well, and the seller had given up doing any yard work in front of it giving it that distinct appearance of an abandoned building. Well, that isn’t entirely true. She did make one personal appearance, driving from New Hampshire to pour gallons of Round Up weed killer all over her sidewalks in a reckless and pathetic attempt at cleaning the front up. For a week afterward every toad that crossed her sidewalk died and I would pick them up and toss their carcasses on her porch. We watched the price get lower and lower, and worried it would attract bottom feeders. There was nothing we could do but sit and wait for them to show up and hope our new neighbors wouldn’t be a nightmare.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/34-our-predicament/feed/0thevailhouse33.The Hall and Closethttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/12/25/33-the-hall-and-closet/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/12/25/33-the-hall-and-closet/#respondSun, 25 Dec 2016 18:23:32 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=1274Continue reading →]]>The last remaining part of the house for us to address after the foyer was the hallway upstairs. The reverse of the doors to a closet and the attic had never had their grain painting covered over, and the first task I undertook was to dry scrap off the paint from the fronts of the doors.

Scraping later paint off the doors. Exploratory scraping of the trim revealed original brown paint.

We continued the paint scheme from our bedroom, Montgomery White walls and Annapolis Gray trim, out into the hallway.

Looking toward our daughter’s room.

Looking toward our bedroom. Note above the far door how much the house has settled.

We added an early electrical brass fixture with opalescent shades.

The hall’s closet is one of my favorite features of the house. It is surprisingly large as it extends underneath the attic. It has an overall wonderful untouched 19th century patina. The finish on the floors is handsomely oxidized and the rough coated plaster walls are unaltered. Chalk numbering from the staircase’s construction left by the carpenter are still extant. I added some shelves to a recessed area with cedar behind to conceal electrical cables running to the attic. With the addition of an overhead antique light fixture, clothing rods, and a small rug on the floor, it was almost like a miniature room.

Shelves and a corner guard added to a recess in the closet.

The beautiful untouched surfaces of floor boards, plaster, and old trim paint.

Nearly pristine grain painting on the inside of the closet door.

Underneath the attic stairs.

Chalk numbering from the time of the staircase’s construction.

The back staircase, before repainting the treads.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/12/25/33-the-hall-and-closet/feed/0OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAthevailhouseOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA32. The Foyerhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/the-foyer/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/the-foyer/#respondTue, 16 Feb 2016 03:44:34 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=858Continue reading →]]>Before we could begin the foyer the decayed porch decking leading to the front door had to be addressed. Long before we lived here someone had replaced just the ends of the boards but they installed the new ones with the nails driven directly into the face of each piece. Many of the nails had begun to protrude out and several boards were very loose. There was a bounce to one side as well so we assumed we would open it up and find more damage.

Removing the ruined patch job someone did to the front porch.

Removal of the decking revealed a big split in one of the beams. It would have to be replaced. It also unexpectedly revealed remains of a very old brick sidewalk that once lead to the portico removed when the porch was added.

Remains of an old brick sidewalk below the porch.

The damaged beam.

Since we did not know the extent of the damage we would find until we had taken the decking off, we had yet to purchase any of the required lumber. Rather than making the trip to the store, we grabbed a piece of wood from the abandoned barn across the street. After replacing the beam we put down new tongue and groove decking in pieces the full width of the porch.

The source of our new beam.

Work begins on the foyer.

Moving on to the foyer, you can see it retained some lovely vintage shag green carpet. The woodwork had been hastily painted in the past and was covered in paint drips.

All the walnut spindles on the staircase had been painted.

A small sample of the original grain painting that was once on the foyer’s trim.

The baseboard required a patch where a gap had appeared from the house having settled.

We decided to go with two earthy shades of green for the paint scheme. We used Benjamin Moore’s Kennebunkport Green for the walls and their Gloucester Sage for the trim. We added a late 19th century light fixture with an opalescent swirl shade that was originally made for use with gas. The ceiling is Bavarian Cream.

The foyer finished save for the radiator.

The staircase from the parlor.

Stain was added to the newly stripped spindles.

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/the-foyer/feed/0thevailhouseSONY DSCSONY DSCSONY DSCOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA31. The Attichttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/31-the-attic/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/31-the-attic/#respondTue, 16 Feb 2016 00:58:50 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=893Continue reading →]]>One of the house’s most peculiar and dramatic features is the winding staircase to the attic. It is so steep that a previous occupant of the house in the 1950’s said she only climbed up it once. It made for some tricky storage situations as the wedge shaped treads are very small in places, it changes direction half way up, and the ceiling at the very top of it is low. Once you make the climb though, you are rewarded with natural light from five charming eye brow windows and a glimpse of how the house is framed.

One side of the door to the attic had never been overpainted.

The severely steep winder stairs to the attic.

The original attic flooring that remains has aged to a fine silvery gray. The rest was presumably taken up in the mid-20th century to make it easier to run electric and/or used as patches elsewhere in the house during radiator installation, or the rebuilding of the interior chimneys. It was replaced with large sheets of plywood.

A challenge for storing heavy objects…

Replacement plywood flooring.

I was fortunate to find a large quantity of Victorian flooring one day in a Manhattan dumpster. It was from the gutted attic floor of a row house. It was filthy being coated with years of black soot, but it was exactly the same thickness and width as what we were missing. We still needed a little bit more though which we discovered on craigslist from a fellow who was mercilessly ruining his 1880’s house in Somerville, New Jersey. He had piles of flooring and shattered woodwork tossed out in his driveway free for the taking. I installed the salvaged wood with antique nails I purchased at a Brimfield antiques show.

The salvaged floorboards from a New York City dumpster drying after being washed.

Much of the attic’s plaster had its original finish.

One of the eye brow windows. Missing and broken pieces of glazing were replaced with antique glass.

Installing the salvaged boards over the old vermiculite insulation.

Finishing the last corner with boards from the house in Somerville.

The completed floor.

Storage!

]]>https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/31-the-attic/feed/0thevailhouseOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA30. The Upstairs Hallhttps://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/30-the-upstairs-hall/
https://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/30-the-upstairs-hall/#respondTue, 16 Feb 2016 00:18:42 +0000http://thevailhouse.wordpress.com/?p=749Continue reading →]]>The upstairs hall consists of seven doorways. All but one retained the original door. The door that once hung from the hall into the front staircase landing was missing and we opted not to find a replacement. The elevational change there is so great, that we feared guests would trip upon entering the landing if they couldn’t see the drop coming.

The hallway after revealing the grain painting on the doors.

The doors that remained were all uniform in type and had maple grain painting. The pair on the south wall each retained a side that had never been covered over and their old varnished surfaces were in excellent condition. The doors are curious as they seem to have been repurposed from elsewhere as they retain earlier thumb latch hardware not seen downstairs, and some have fancier moulded panel sides that face into the wall when they are open. My theory is the Vail’s retained them from the earlier house on the site and they were rehung and grain painted in the 1860’s, as the graining is executed over the hinges and screws that they are attached with.

The faux maple paint in a terrific state of preservation.

At the top of the back stairs we used a late 19th century light fixture with opalescent swirl shades. We also used an antique fixture in the closet which extends underneath the attic staircase. Illuminating the closet revealed the original carpenter’s white chalk numbering on the staircase. The whole interior retains a beautiful patina of age on the floor boards, lime washed rough plaster walls and ceiling, and the oxidized underside of the stairs. We framed out the back wall of a small alcove section with cedar to conceal electrical wiring and added wooden shelves and a corner guard.

A late 19th century brass fixture with opalescent swirl shades.

Two views of the hall after painting the walls and polishing the floor. Note the shape of the far door opening from settling.

The original rough finished and whitewashed plaster walls in a closet.

Extra storage space under the attic stairs.

Chalk numbering left by the carpenter during the construction of the stairs.